Robert Rorabeck Poems

Jaundiced by the pinafores and the pain:
Here I go running again,
With or without the paths up through the nosebleeds
Of tourists,
...

Cheapening in an amphitheatre outside of
School:
The truants smoke the detritus of paper airplanes;
And they swim in daylight
...

It so happens that the places that we go all turn around,
Like gawkers smacking their lips at the fastly shooting umbrae
Of fireworks in the
Skies- Both over Mexico,
...

My body does not know the places that your body rests:
The wishing wells, the oasis’s-
When you lay down beside him- Alma, what is it that you know:
How has it become official:
...

In the trees
There are elbows
And they grow
Real long
...

A red dragon of fireworks smiling lusciously tongued:
Giving clues to the out of work helpers-
The men who pass the green smoke underneath the overpasses
As it rains
...

Its so hard to begin with
The pronoun that could be
A dog,
A ba$tard,
...

Mostly it’s the liver involved.
He takes one for the Gipper.
He boos the pretty boys wooing from
Their stalls,
...

Beginning to grow beautiful-
Metamorphosed by my letters and drinking
Habits,
Getting to be frenetic and daubed,
...

Stacked against me,
I suppose we all must die,
But I have a nasty trick of taking a whole
Lot of ba$tards with me before I go-
...